Brixton Bwoy Read online

  By now, work was getting the better of Tee, too. Sometimes his old friends would drive by in their smart cars and call up to him, asking what he was doing. ‘De great Tee ah work like a slave,’ they would say. ‘Stop dat, man, and come and do some big robberies with we. You can’t make no money ah work fe white man, star. Ah foolishness dat, Tee, God know.’

  Tee tried not to listen, and told them that he was finished with jail. Then some would say, ‘Ah true,’ but others would reply, ‘Go weh! Ah soft you ah get, soft, man.’ Tee began to spend more of his wages on doing up his Jensen, which he kept getting out from the garage, or some other little luxury to make him feel better; this didn’t please Girlie, who was stuck in the flat with Paulette and had no money to buy things for herself.

  At least Mr and Mrs Fryer came to the rescue, at the weekends. They would look after Paulette while Tee and Girlie climbed into the Jensen and drove down Streatham Hill. Girlie could still drink like a fish and when she was ready to enjoy herself Tee desired her more than ever.

  But during the week, things went from bad to worse. Sometimes Tee noticed that Girlie’s life was a bit of an ordeal, washing and cooking and cleaning and looking after the baby, but he couldn’t see what he could do about it, and anyway, he thought, Girlie must have realised what she was getting herself into when she got pregnant. Then one day, Tee was almost killed on the building site when a girder fell and landed only a foot away from him. He went home in a state of shock, thinking about life and death, and found the flat in a state of chaos. It was filthy, there was no food in the fridge, and Paulette was crying, with a dirty nappy on and no one to look after her. After a frantic search Tee eventually found Girlie in the next-door flat, drinking tea and laughing happily with a neighbour.

  That evening, Tee and Girlie had a big argument, and the next day, he gave up his job, took out his Jensen Interceptor, and drove down to the Front Line.

  He was back into a life of crime, robbing, conning, making money however he could, and now that he had cash to spend again, Tee’s eyes began to wander. One night at a party he met a young woman called Lorna whom he had known from years before, and he ended up staying over at her flat.

  Girlie was furious when he went back to her the next morning, but after screaming at him for a bit she burst into tears. She already felt he had let her down by giving up his job. Tee assured her that his heart belonged to her – and he really did love Girlie – but the truth was that he was always looking for some new excitement.

  Girlie and Tee still spent the occasional good weekend together, but in general things were going from bad to worse. Arguments grew into fights, and to his shame she sometimes got the worst of these. Neither of them was even twenty years old; they had taken on family life without realising what they were getting into, and both of them were fed up with it. But when Girlie talked about separating, Tee’s heart would melt and he would hold her and kiss her and love her up, telling her not to be silly, and they would be loving again until Tee stayed out another few nights, or Girlie abandoned Paulette, and then the fighting would start up again.

  Tee tried not to see too much of Lorna, because of Girlie, but he couldn’t help himself. Lorna loved to go out clubbing and she had as much energy in bed as on the dance floor. Although she lived with her mum, he had a green light to stay there whenever he wanted, and he was happy to get no sleep if it was Lorna, rather than Paulette, keeping him awake. And if that wasn’t enough, he also began to see another girl from the old times, a dark beauty named Princess. Tee now had three women and a Jensen Interceptor to support, and he needed money, lots of it.

  One day he snatched a bag which by good fortune turned out to have £1,500 in it, but when he was running away a couple of idiots who knew him shouted out his name. That evening, some police officers stopped Tee and said his name had been mentioned in connection with the snatching. He was put on an ID parade, but fortunately he had changed clothes and was not picked out.

  When he got back on to the streets, he was in a seriously bad mood. He walked around telling people in Brixton that they could call him anything they liked, but he was not going to have his name shouted out in the streets. That night, still feeling angry and fed up, he ran into some of the lads he had been with when he was arrested on the tube before being sent to Aylesbury. They were draped in gold jewellery and flashing their wealth. He reminded them that he had gone down for thefts they had all committed, and that he hadn’t grassed them up; not only had they repaid him by never coming to visit him in prison, they hadn’t even sent a fiver into his private spends account. ‘Now me ah see you all in ah pure big gold,’ he said. While he spoke, his fury and sense of injustice rose until he could contain himself no more, and he pulled out his knife and relieved them of all their rings, diamonds, rope chains and everything else. They didn’t even try to resist him. ‘And you all better tink yourself lucky me no plunge up couple ah you,’ he said. The only one he didn’t rob was B, who had been sent to borstal.

  For all his problems supporting the women he already had, it wasn’t long before Tee had got himself involved with Karen, a blue-eyed blonde whom he met at a club. Now he had Girlie and Paulette, Lorna, Princess and Karen, and he couldn’t let go of any of them, he liked them all too much. Although he felt that his life was spinning out of control, going from one woman to the next, if he saw another dazzler in the street, he couldn’t help going after this new one as well.

  Princess was now his favourite. She would tell him about her wealthy mother who lived abroad. She planned to go and live with her. ‘When dat day deh come,’ Tee would tell her, ‘me ah go miss you.’ But Lorna and he were also getting closer, and Lorna was now starting to talk about having children. ‘Let’s have five and they’ll grow up to be singer superstars like the Jacksons,’ she would say. If he ran into her while he was out with one of his other women, she would wave at him across the crowd and shout, ‘Oh, yeah, Tee.’ Then she would cross the street and put her lips to his ear and whisper, ‘Are you taking me home tonight darling?’, the hot breath from her wet lips caressing his ear. It was impossible not to turn round and say, ‘Why of course, honey.’

  When he went back to see Girlie, she would say, ‘Hiya stranger,’ and try to look happy. Paulette was now getting bigger and stronger, but Girlie was very unhappy. She would break down and cry. ‘What’s wrong?’ he would ask. ‘Nothing,’ she would reply. He would hold her and kiss her and tell her not to worry. He would take her for a drive and a smoke and slowly she would come round, but never for very long.

  That year, things were hotting up in Brixton. One of the toughest young firms on the street was run by Dennis and Dirty, with their girls, Evonne and toothless Dorothy. At that time there were also a couple of policemen, Wickens and Chapman, whose aim it was to make life difficult for the neighbourhood criminals. One night they made the mistake of messing with Dennis and Dirty and their firm, and ended up in hospital. Of course the policemen knew who had assaulted them, and so the members of the firm were all on the run. But that was nothing new in Brixton.

  That year, too, Tee’s old friend Barry Black, who was doing eight years for a string of robberies on milkmen, died in prison, and it was rumoured the screws had killed him.

  Tee was now committing crimes at will. If he saw someone wearing something he liked, he would simply say, ‘Ho, your chops is nice, mek me try dat on, no.’ Then he would add, ‘Mek ah hold ah couple days’ wear of dis, no,’ and whether they said yes or no made no difference. If they said no, he would reply, ‘You too mean, man.’ If they said nothing, he would say, ‘Nice one, man,’ and walk away. With this little trick, he soon ended up looking like a walking jewellery shop, and Girlie and his other women were covered in gold too.

  Tee had now been out of prison for two years, the longest period of freedom since he was first sent away at the age of thirteen. He believed he was invincible. He was never going back to jail. But at the end of 1978, he was arrested for pickpocketing and though he was let
off with a big fine, it shook him up. He felt pickpocketing had too many risks without enough gains. He had to do something a bit smarter.

  It was at this time he met up again with Blakie and Roderick, two of his old friends from the Brixton Rebels. They were robbers but not very successful, and they were looking for a third to join their crew – someone big and strong and fearless, someone, in fact, like Tee. Early one morning, Blakie and Roderick called around at Tee’s in a stolen Ford Capri, and suggested he go along with them on a day’s crime spree. Tee was ready for something like this, and agreed immediately. He climbed into the car. Blakie asked what he had with him, and Tee pulled out a flick-knife. Roderick in turn showed his cutlass, while Blakie pulled out a big long .45 handgun.

  They drove off and headed for Croydon, where Roderick and Tee ended up walking armed into a jewellery shop on the high street. Roderick had the .45 and he waved it in the air and shouted at the jeweller and his assistant, ‘Don’t blood claat move or try a ting or you both dead fast. Where is all the money, get it fast or you’ll both pick one each out of this gun in your fucking face!’

  Tee had pulled out his knife, which was long enough to run a man clean through. The jeweller opened a drawer and, leaning over, Tee saw that inside were stacks of notes. He pulled a bag from his pocket and reached over and began stuffing all the money inside it. He grabbed a case, which contained gold. At the same time, Roderick was wasting no time filling another bag with gold and jewels from the displays. It was only a matter of seconds before Roderick ordered the two men into the back of the shop and he and Tee ran out, jumped into the waiting car, and were gone.

  When they divided up the money, it came to five grand between the three of them, not to mention the gold they had taken. Tee felt delighted. This was much better than working on the building site for £120 a week. He and Roderick and Blakie agreed to work together from then on.

  There was no need to do anything for a while, with all the money they had made, but eventually that was used up and it was time to head out again. This time, Blakie was ill, so Roderick brought along another man, Johnny White, to be the driver. That day was more sobering for Tee. Nothing seemed to go right. They first tried a supermarket in Wimbledon, wandering around looking for an opportunity. But they couldn’t see one, so they left. As they walked back down the street towards their Ford, a police car pulled up. Someone in the supermarket must have called the cops, because the two policemen questioned them about what they had been doing in there. Fortunately, they didn’t bother to search them, as Roderick had the .45 down his back, Tee had his knife, and in the car, Johnny had a .38 handgun. When the police let them go, the three of them went back to the car and they drove out of Wimbledon and went home penniless, but at least without a court hearing ahead of them.

  The pattern was now set, and whenever they ran short of money Blakie and Roderick and Tee would meet up and try some form of robbery or other. Sometimes it was shops, other times it was stealing from drug dealers – this could be more dangerous physically, but at least it didn’t usually have the risk of a jail sentence at the end. If they heard of someone holding a big enough quantity of coke or heroin or weed or hash they would make arrangements to meet and view the goods, and then simply pull out their weapons and walk away with the drugs.

  It was a hit-and-miss profession. On one occasion, they heard about a dealer in Tottenham selling coke. They called up and arranged to buy three kilos. When they got to the meeting place, they tested the coke and found it to be good stuff. They produced an attaché case and lifted up the lid, showing the piles of notes. In fact the piles were blank paper, and only the top notes were real money, but this view was enough to make the dealer and his friends salivate, and they went out and returned with the three kilos. Blakie picked up the coke and put it down his trousers, Roderick pulled out the .45 and ordered the dealers into another room, and they walked out as calm as anything, to celebrate their great success – only to discover that the men they had robbed had been planning to rob them, and had cut the coke so it was more like one kilo than three. Nevertheless, this was still a lot of coke, and the three robbers divided it up and set about selling their shares.

  One night, around this time, Tee ended up at a party with Natty D, Dirty H, Pete and a few other friends. They decided to step outside to get some fresh air when an older man pushed Pete as he came past, saying, ‘Bwoy, move outa de way.’

  Pete exchanged a few words with the man who was soon threatening him. Tee joined in, saying, ‘Yeah, Pete, take him outside, let we gang him and bust up him, claat.’ The man started on him and asked if he wanted war.

  ‘Of course,’ said Tee. ‘What you think we going to do?’

  They walked outside, the man breathing down Tee’s neck. Tee suddenly started to throw lefts and rights to his chin. The man wasn’t even throwing punches, just trying to keep on his feet. The fight carried on down the pavement until they came to a jeweller’s shop. In the heat of the action, Tee gave the man a flying jump kick and he shot back against the window of the jeweller’s, shattering it. Tee picked him out of the glass and gave him some more kicks and head-butts and rights and lefts until he was out cold. Then Tee noticed another man reaching in to the shop to grab some of the gold, so he ran over and lifted him up by his shirt collar with both arms and told him to beat it, these were his takings. Then he let him go and started filling his pockets. By this stage, all his friends had gathered round and were looking at him with their mouths open. ‘Nobody don’t want no gold?’ he asked. Then hell broke loose as everybody grabbed what they could.

  The next day the whole of Brixton was talking about the previous night’s events. ‘Did you see the way Tee drape up that man who tried to steal the gold?’ someone said. ‘Yeah, drape up! That’s what they should call Tee, Drape Up.’ He took the name as a compliment and even made it part of his practice to lift up, or drape up, people when he robbed them.

  In the summer of 1979, his girlfriend Karen told him she was pregnant. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said when she told him. ‘I didn’t mean to get pregnant. Can’t you just punch me in the belly to make me lose it?’

  Tee took her in his arms and said, ‘Hey babe, I’m happy you’re having a baby and I’m not going to leave you. We’re both going to love the little child when you give birth.’

  She smiled with happiness and held him close and they ended up making love all that night.

  Girlie must have known about his other women, for apart from being away all the time he would sometimes call out other names in his sleep. But though Girlie quizzed him about this, she never really pushed him. And by now he had added another girl to his list, a plump Indian named Iley. He couldn’t stop. He was women crazy. Every time he managed to get away from one woman he would jump in his car and drive to another. He was driving fast, but heading nowhere good.

  7

  Return to Jamaica

  In the midst of all this, as Christmas drew near again, Tee received news that his brother Gamper, who was living in America with his wife, had been killed in a road accident. Tee had not seen Gamper for many years, but the news hit him badly, and he kept thinking back to how Gamper and his friends had saved him when he was drowning in that river years before.

  The first thing that came into his mind was getting to Jamaica, where Gamper’s funeral was going to be held. But he was broke. He was still hanging out with Blakie and Roderick, and they were still working armed robberies, but they were not having much luck and their last job had only netted them a couple of hundred pounds. But when Tee told his partners about his predicament they were very sympathetic, and they stole a Ford Escort as a getaway car and drove all round London, looking for an easy touch. As they drove, Tee grew sadder and more worried that he wouldn’t be able to be beside Gamper as he left the world of light and disappeared into the world of darkness.

  Eventually, they left London, looking for some small-town target, and by the time they drove into the centre of a town it was already
getting late. Tee was praying that they would get a touch here. ‘Mek me skout out one ah dem shops fore we call it ah day?’ Roderick suggested and they all agreed. They decided on a likely-looking gift shop.

  They parked the stolen Ford a couple of blocks away, and Tee was the first out of the car, the first to the top of the road, and the first to enter the store. He walked around the shop but secretly looked through a half-open door into a back room where he saw a man sorting through piles of money on a table in front of him. It was the Christmas takings! Tee’s eyes almost popped out of his head. He pushed open the door and walked into the room. The man looked up, and his mouth fell open in shock and horror as he saw Tee’s big knife.

  Tee walked forward. He pulled out a big white carrier bag from his pocket and began to stuff the money inside. The man stood up and opened his mouth as if to make a protest, but Tee gave him a shove and he fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes. But instead of lying there as Tee had expected, the man scrambled to his feet and ran past him out of the door as if he was turbo charged. Tee barely noticed, he was so excited by all the money. He stuffed the rest of it in the bag, except for two piles of twenty-pound notes, which he hid in his underpants on account of his particular needs and the fact that Blakie and Roderick were still nowhere to be seen. But when he turned to leave, he was confronted by the man who had run away returning with a couple of assistants.

  Fortunately, behind them, he also saw Blakie and Roderick. ‘Money to rass claat!’ Tee shouted and Blakie and Roderick drew their big knives as he ran towards them. The men who were following him saw this and screeched to a halt. They charged in the other direction, knocking goods off the shelves and making a terrible noise. The robbers walked out of the store as cool as they could and then turned the corner and sprinted up the block to where their car was parked. Roderick was the fastest runner, and by the time Blakie and Tee got there the car was already started and the doors open. They dived in and Roderick skidded off and out of there as fast as he could. A few miles away they came to a train station, and they abandoned the car and walked calmly in and bought their tickets and took the train back to London. When they were safely home, they counted the money and found they had £1,800 each.